


Can't Choose Your Friends During the Apocalypse

by Ezlebe



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Five And One, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-28
Updated: 2012-02-28
Packaged: 2017-10-31 20:50:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/348241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ezlebe/pseuds/Ezlebe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>5and1 prompt from the meme: Glenn wants advice on getting with Maggie, everyone thinks he’s with Daryl</p>
            </blockquote>





	Can't Choose Your Friends During the Apocalypse

**Rick**  
  
“I really like her,” Glenn says quietly, glancing out of the corner of his eye at Maggie. “I figured you would have some pointers, since you’re married.”  
  
Rick blinks at him slowly before taking a glance around the field, turning back to him with a flat stare that probably broke at least a few hundred petty thieves. “I’m gonna be honest, kid, I don’t fully understand what you’re asking.”  
  
“What do you mean you don’t-” He coughs into a fist and leans in closer, “Maggie, Hershel’s daughter?”  
  
“Yeah,” Rick agrees slowly, fingers worrying the brim of his hat as he looks just past Glenn again, but when he glances back in the same direction it’s just Daryl, working on something inside of his bike.  
  
“And?”  
  
“I’m gonna go check on Carl,” Rick responds, expression faltering as he flashes an awkward grin and hastily backs up the porch and into the house, nearly tripping over a wayward chair.  
  
 **Lori**  
  
“So I thought, maybe she likes flowers?”  
  
“Oh, honey, I don’t think that’s such a good idea.” Lori’s tendency to treat him like a child doesn’t usually get on his nerves, not much does anymore, but right now he feels like snapping and proving the apparent presumption right by stomping off in a huff. However, as she continues to stare into him with soft, still faintly red-rimmed eyes, he feels the indignation quickly seep out and be replaced by desperation.  
  
“Please? I wouldn’t want to make the mistake of accidentally mentioning your situation. Who knows, since apparently repopulating the earth is hot right now?” He doesn’t really mean it, but the threat seems to be effective as she takes on an expression of muted horror.  
  
“Carnations, definitely.” She finally nods slowly, after a bout of harsh glaring he wouldn’t exactly volunteer to relive.  
  
Glenn opens his mouth to thank her, but quickly stops short, realizing he couldn’t exactly go to the corner flower shop right now.  
  
“And make sure they’re yellow ones,” she finishes with an edge he doesn’t understand, storming away before he can stop her.  
  
 **Dale**  
  
“You should probably just go for it, son.” Dale says, startling Glenn out of what had been the previously empty silence of the RV.  
  
“But I haven’t even said anything yet.”  
  
The older man gives him a crooked smile, “you’ve been staring at that piece of jerky for at least ten minutes.”  
  
“I have gone for it, and she keeps blowing me off,” Glenn sighs, tearing the jerky in his hand in half, shoving one of them in his mouth and chewing angrily.  
  
Dale gives him the patented ‘taken aback’ look, one eye widening in confusion, “she?”  
  
Glenn hurries to swallow the food, nearly coughing. “Maggie, remember? We talked about this a few days ago.”  
  
“Right, right,” Dale mumbles, eyes narrowing at Glenn. “That wasn’t what I meant.” The man continues to mumble something incomprehensible as he descends the stairs, leaving Glenn blinking in confusion behind him.  
  
 **Shane**  
  
“You gotta be completely sure, kid.” Shane says, a glint in his eye that Glenn doesn’t completely understand. “Because if you’re not, it’s going to just fuck everything up.”  
  
Glenn cocks his eyebrow at the taller man, “I wouldn’t go that far-”  
  
“I’m serious.” Shane steps closer, “you could lose everything you’ve ever worked for in life, just one instant of doubt and then it’s just a cycle of mistakes from there on out.”  
  
Glenn takes a step back, feeling like he’s interrupted a completely different conversation,“I don’t- Are we talking about the same thing? I kind of already did lose everything, this is about getting something back, you know?”  
  
“You already have something!” Shane bursts out, face red, “I don’t want you to make any mistakes, kid, just don’t.”  
  
“Okay?” Glenn laughs anxiously, hoping it doesn’t sound too skeptical. He takes a quick look around for an escape from the conversation, and sees Daryl cleaning arrows under the awning of the RV.  Perfect. “Thanks for the advice, man. I’m just gonna... go, over there.”  
  
“I knew you’d make the right choice,” Shane yells as he walks away. Glenn’s gait is quicker than usual, and by the time he slumps down in a lawn chair next to Daryl, he’s realizes that Shane might have been right. He could barely keep a girlfriend before the world went to shit, how is he gonna do that now, especially with a bunch of friends who seem to be crazy.  
  
“What’s he hollerin’ about?” Daryl asks gruffly, barely looking up.  
  
“At this point, I have honestly no idea.”  
  
 **Carol**  
  
He’s very nearly given up at this point. No one in the group is even trying to help, outside Lori’s suggestion for flowers, and even the walkers are probably plotting against him at this point. He sighs and pulls himself into Dale’s RV, eager to get out of the sun, and nearly knocks over Carol.  
  
Maybe this is a sign, maybe he was missing something, and Carol is the bearer of that knowledge.  
  
She gives him an odd smile, quirking a brow, continuing to rub at some invisible spot on Dale’s counter. Glenn’s fairly certain the cleaning is some kind of obsessive compulsive thing she hung onto after the apocalypse, or just a coping mechanism, but it makes him nervous whenever he talks to her because it feels like she might try to give him a bath.  
  
“Carol, you’re a woman.” He says, immediately regretting the hollow way the words resonate in the room. Sometimes he worries the apocalypse has taken away what little tact he had before. “I was wondering if you could help me out, with you know, another woman.”  
  
She shrugs and sits down, and he eagerly takes the bench across from her. “What do you need Glenn?”  
  
“I wanted to know if you had any advice for getting a woman to see me in a different way.”  
  
“Well,” she starts, looking down at her hands, and Glenn is worried he might have made the woman remember her husband. He really hopes that’s not the case.  
  
“I mean if you don’t, that’s okay, too.”  
  
“I’m just thinking a moment,” Carol says quietly. “You should notice the little things they like, and try to be a good person even if you don’t act like one.” She pauses, mouth quirking up, “and never think about settling for someone, especially not now. The things we could experience mean we have to know who’ll always be there; who’ll always help you if you’re in trouble, and never try to get you into it.”  
  
He stares at her, latching onto the words, and wonders why this woman’s usually so quiet, when she’s apparently this smart. “So I should be that,” Glenn confirms, nodding his head. “You honestly think that’ll work?”  
  
Carol looks him directly in the eye. “I think you should think about who that is to _you_.”  
  
He runs his tongue along the back of his teeth, a nervous gesture he’d never really gotten over after his braces got removed, and feels like he’s missing some sort of bigger picture here. Every person he’s talked with seems to know something, and it’s starting to get annoying.  
  
Glenn fells like he’s almost grasped it when Daryl slams open the door, sweaty from doing something outside in the oppressive heat that had fallen over the area.  
  
“Ya’ll havin some secret meeting in here?” Daryl greets, forcing Glenn to slide further in the booth as the other man sits down on the same bench. Glenn rolls his eyes and leans against the window, watching as Carol gets up and insists on getting them both some of the pears they’d found on a tree, his previous thoughts forgotten.  
  
 **Daryl**  
  
Glenn pulls himself to the top of the RV, where Rick had said Daryl was on lookout. He didn’t really think Daryl would have much advice; the other man was callous to nearly everyone but Carol or the kids, and Glenn hadn’t seen him make a move on any of the women in camp, but he may as well tick the other man off the list. However, he forgets the instant he can actually see Daryl, who’s apparently got some sort of apparatus set up with his crossbow facing the fence, laying in the sun with his shirt off, and Glenn’s mind kind of just. Stops.  
  
“What are you doing up here?” Daryl asks, leaning up and covering his face with a hand, simultaneously trying awkwardly to pull his shirt back on. Glenn idly wonders how many bolts he’d get shot in his backside if he grabbed the clothing, and threw it off the roof.  
  
Glenn stares for a couple of moments before life snaps back into focus, and he realizes Daryl is glaring at something in the horizon. “I was gonna ask you something, but now I’m just wondering what you’re doing.”  
  
“It’s my watch, what do you think I’m doing,” Daryl grouses. “Again, what the hell you doing up here?”  
  
“You weren’t really watching,” Glenn answers, and realizes all his tact has really flown out of the metaphorical window.  
  
“Doesn’t matter anyway, you said we wouldn’t see the walkers from here and they still parked the damn Winnebago under the tree.” Daryl rolls his eyes, presumably at the memory of Lori and Dale disagreeing with Glenn about the optimal positioning for their rig.  
  
“Well, technically I said there _probably_ wouldn’t be any walkers coming from this direction.”  
  
“Whatever, you know what I meant.” Daryl scratches idly at a scar on his bicep, “I don’t even know why you try, never seem to listen until right before they’re about to get eaten anyway.”  
  
“Yeah,” Glenn agrees stiffly. Suddenly, all the worry he’d dedicated to Maggie and their psuedo-relationship seems a little pointless as he gingerly sits down next to Daryl, watching for walkers from a little patch of field. He looks sidelong at Daryl’s profile, the other man staring at something Glenn can’t see, and he just wants to lay down, maybe lay his head on the other man’s thigh, and stare at the sky.  
  
Glenn realizes he’s never thought about this with Maggie, never just wanted to lay about, because with her it felt like something he _should_ do, something to do to be like Rick, a man who’s managed to keep his whole family and his best friend during the apocalypse.  
  
“Something you wanna say?” Daryl growls, giving him a suspicious look, and Glenn realizes he’s been staring for a few minutes longer than a glance.  
  
Glenn bites his lip and shakes his head, laying down and closing his eyes against the setting sun.  
  
“Can’t say I believe you.” Daryl says a few minutes later, actually chuckling when Glenn groans in response.  
  
“I dunno, man, just stuff.”  
  
“Well every man has a right to his privacy,” Daryl acquiesces in a wry voice, and Glenn sighs when the sun is replaced by shadow across his eyelids. He opens his eyes and Daryl is leaning over him with a mocking look, mouth tilted up at his own joke.  
  
Glenn inexplicably feels the urge lean up and kiss him, Carol’s words filling his head as he sits up on his elbows. “Well, you know, uh-” he struggles to speak and just decides to go for it, homophobic redneck reactions be damned.  He leans up further, lips connecting at an awkward angle with Daryl’s, and the other man seems to freeze in place.  
  
Glenn very nearly pulls back in embarrassment, but Daryl starts to react after a moment, their lips separating for an instant as Daryl shifts into a more comfortable angle before surging back, pushing him prone against the RV’s roof. They continue for a few moments, until Glenn’s lungs feel the need for air, and as Daryl pulls back, he pins Glenn with a curious stare.  
  
“I was thinking you came up here for the farmer’s girl.” Daryl says, breathing hard. Glenn rolls his eyes, and can’t really believe Daryl would be the one to bring it up, especially now. The man continues, brow cocked, “you been talking about her a lot, so this is a bit of a surprise.”  
  
Glenn sighs, thumping the back of his head on the RV in frustration. “No one else seemed to approve of it and, you know, made me think.”  
  
“And you decide I’m the best bet after her?” Daryl asks, face getting a little closed off as he tries pull back from Glenn.  
  
“No, no,” Glenn disagrees, grabbing the other man’s shoulder to keep him in place. “I mean they, uh,” he trips over his words, having trouble finding the right order. “Just the sort of thing that made me think about what I actually wanted.” He shrugs, “and it’s the whole end of this world, start of another one, do what I want rather than what _seems_ to be the right thing.”  
  
Daryl stares for a few moments, eyebrow cocked in confusion. “That means what, you’re throwing caution to the wind?”  
  
Glenn thinks a moment, trying harder to sum what’s been going on into something more compact. “I slept with Maggie cause I was horny and lonely, thought it was something, but I just realized it wasn’t, and I’m starting to think everyone is under the impression I cheated on you.” He takes a deeper breath, letting it out harshly, “to put it simple, I really like you, a lot.”  
  
Daryl seems to consider him, leaning harder on the elbow he’s got next to Glenn’s side. “When did you have time to sleep with the farmer’s daughter?” His tone has returned to teasing, so Glenn knows he’s just being a dick at this point.  
  
“That’s what you got out of this?” He mutters, closing his eyes in frustration.  
  
“Nah,” Daryl chuckles, running a calloused hand through Glenn’s hair, and leaning back down. “It’s just fun to see you tied in knots.” Daryl punctuates the statement by kissing him again, shifting so that he’s nearly completely on top of Glenn, who finds the position comfortable if he ignores the slightly sharp edge of a piece from the RV’s roof digging into his shoulder blade.  
  
He tries to move away from it, but when there’s a loud creak he decides it’s better to just leave it, moaning as Daryl shifts a leg between his.  
  
There’s an odd noise, and it nags at him a bit, but it’s when he hears it again that he realizes it’s someone coughing in the loudest way possible, about a foot down from where they lay. Glenn pushes off a grumbling Daryl, and smiles stiffly at Dale, who’s giving them a disapproving look from the roof door of the RV. He doesn’t seem surprised in the least.

“You boys shouldn’t volunteer for watch if you’re just gonna mess around.” Dale says, giving them a final, stern look before returning to the belly of the Winnebago.

“Aw man,” Daryl mutters, “I’m never gonna live this down.”

“Shit,” Glenn groans, ignoring him and covering his eyes. “Now I _know_ they thought I was cheating on you.”

Daryl says nothing in response, just turning back to the field he had been assigned to watch, mouth turned down into something nearly resembling a pout. Glenn decides not to break the silence any further, sighing deeply and leaning into his shoulder with an unspoken promise for later.


End file.
